More Work for the Undertaker

by Margery Allingham

Presently, Luke, with Dice and two constables, came slowly in, carrying the coffin between them. They set its glistening length down tenderly on the chairs and stood back, while Yeo, who had followed them, his hands deep in his pockets, began to whistle a little tuneless dirge to himself.

  ‘The weight’s about right,’ he observed to Luke.

  The younger man glanced at him unhappily, admitting the suggestion. However, having committed himself, he did not waver. He nodded to the sergeant.

  ‘Bring him along.’

  After a moment or so they heard the undertaker and his escort coming down the corridor. He had a confident step as heavy as the police officer’s own, and when he stepped into the room, bareheaded and without his heavy driving cape, he looked infinitely respectable.

  Every man in the room watched his face as he caught sight of the coffin, but only one fully appreciated his remarkable control. It was true that he stopped in his tracks and the familiar stars of sweat appeared at his curling hair line, but he was outraged rather than afraid. With unerring instinct he turned to Yeo.

  ‘I hardly expected this, sir,’ he said mildly. ‘It may be forward of me to say so, but this isn’t very nice.’ The understatement embraced the sordidness of the apartment, the sacrilegious handling of the decently dead, the rights of the individual, and the high-handedness of officials generally. He stood before them, an honest, scandalized tradesman.

  Luke met his eyes squarely and strove, Mr Campion felt, to avoid anything faintly like defiance.

  ‘Open it, Bowels.’

  ‘Open it, sir?’

  ‘Right away. If you won’t, we will.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, Mr Luke. You don’t know what you’re suggesting, sir.’ His readiness was far more disconcerting than his shocked protests. ‘I’ll do it. I’m bound to do anything you say. I know my duty. I’m surprised, very surprised. I can’t say more nor less.’ He paused and looked round him with distaste. ‘Did I understand you want me to do it here, sir?’

  Once again Yeo had begun to whistle just under his breath. He seemed unaware that he was making a sound and his glance never wavered from the wide pink face with the sharp little eyes and small, unpleasant mouth.

  ‘Here and now.’ Luke was obdurate. ‘Got a screwdriver on you?’

  Jas made no attempt to procrastinate. He felt in his coat pocket and nodded.

  ‘I have, sir. Never move without my tools. I’ll just take my jacket off if you’ll permit.’

  They watched him strip to the very white shirt with the old-fashioned stiff cuffs. He took the gold links out carefully and laid them on the edge of the desk. Then he rolled up his sleeves, revealing forearms like a navvy’s.

  ‘Now I’m quite ready, sir. But there’s just one little thing.’

  ‘Speak up, man.’ Yeo interfered without intending to. ‘You’ve every right to say what you like. What is it?’

  ‘Well, sir, I wondered if I could ’ave a drop of Lysol in a bucket of water, just to put my ’ands in.’

  While a constable scuttled off to fetch it for him he took out a large handkerchief, white as his shirt, and folded it cornerwise.

  ‘The gentleman died of a bad trouble,’ he said deprecatingly to the room at large. ‘I’ll ask you to stand a foot or so back for the first minute or two. It’s for your own sakes. You’ve got your work to do, but there’s no need for you to run into more danger than you need. You’ll excuse me, I know.’

  He tied the sling over the lower part of his face and plunged his hands in the homely white bucket which the constable held out to him. Then, after shaking a shower of odorous rain over the bare boards, he got down to work.

  His blunt hands worked swiftly over the screws. They appeared to be set in steel worms and moved easily, but there were a great many of them and he took his time setting them out neatly in a row beside the cuff links.

  When at last he had finished, he paused and looked round, finally motioning Yeo and Luke to step a little nearer. He halted them some five feet from the casket and, glancing from one to the other, nodded briskly to show that the moment had come.

  As they watched him, with the fascination which the truly horrible engenders, he whipped up the lid.

  Every one in the room caught a glimpse of the body. The form was shrouded with something white and gauze-like, but the hands, folded at the waist, were unmistakably real and human.

  A single note of Yeo’s whistled tune sounded loudly in the silent room and Luke sagged a little, his wide shoulders suddenly less square.

  A grip like a vice on his wrist took him utterly by surprise and Campion thrust him the remaining foot or so forward without effort.

  At the instant when Jas Bowels was about to replace the lid it was knocked bodily out of his hold, and Luke’s hand, guided by Campion’s own, came down on the folded fingers in the shroud. The D.D.I. recoiled and recovered himself, and as Yeo, whose reflexes were older, came up beside him, he bent forward and took the folded hands and turned them over. The next moment he had snatched the gauze from the whitely powdered face and the entire room was in commotion. It was a most extraordinary sight.

  A man clad in thick woollen underclothes was lying trussed in a contraption which, although faintly surgical in appearance, had yet something of the padded Victorian love-seat about it. A webbing corselet strapped him securely in position, and across his body just below the hands was a wooden partition securely dividing the top from the lower half of his cage. His head and the upper part of his chest were free, and ingeniously concealed holes or slits, invisible from the outside of the box, permitted the air to reach him freely. He was breathing heavily but without a great deal of noise, and his hands were secured by leather bracelets which, although they gave them little play, were yet slack enough to permit him to beat on the roof of his prison.

  Yeo spoke first. He was white to the lips but still authoritative.

  ‘Doped,’ he said huskily. ‘Alive.’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s alive.’ Campion sounded tired but very relieved. ‘They were all alive, of course. That was the object of the exercise.’

  ‘They?’ Yeo’s glance wandered to the undertaker, who stood stiffly between two constables, his handkerchief-mask hanging limply round his neck like a noose.

  Campion sighed. ‘Greener, your Greek Street bird, was the one before this,’ he said softly. ‘Before him, Jackson the Brighton gunman, I think. Before that, Ed Geddy, who killed the girl in the kiosk. I haven’t caught up with the others yet. They go to Ireland like this, and after, by more orthodox conveyance, to anywhere they may take a fancy. As a rule there’s a mourner laid on to weep them through the Customs. She has the coroner’s order-to-ship tucked in her worn black handbag.’

  ‘This is a lovely job, worth the price of admission alone. The organization is really quite beautiful.’

  ‘Good God!’ Yeo looked at Jas Bowels’s curling and venerable head. ‘Who was doing it all? Him?’

  ‘No, that’s the boss.’ Campion nodded to the sleeping form. ‘A genius in his way, but hopeless at murder. How he managed to kill Miss Ruth successfully I really don’t know. He foozled everything else concerning it.’

  Yeo waited. Reaction was making him both red and irritable.

  ‘Campion!’ he burst out at last. ‘That’s no way to give evidence. A junior constable six weeks in the force could do better than this. What’s the first thing, man, what’s the first thing?’

  Luke came out of his trance with a jolt.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said smartly. ‘His name is Henry James. He’s the manager of the Apron Street branch of Clough’s Bank.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Yeo with deep satisfaction, ‘that’s more like it. Now we’re getting somewhere.’

  27. Farewell Apron Street

  ‘IT WAS DONE out of kindness.’ The undertaker spoke with dogged obstinacy. ‘Put that down in writing and never let it be forgot. ’Unted animals, that’s ’ow I saw them, and that’s ’ow I saw him in the finish.’r />
  ‘In spite of the fact that, on your own evidence, both you and Wilde the chemist had been forced by James, after a long period of financial pressure, to take part in this – ah – outrageous traffic?’ Yeo was growing ponderous, giving his celebrated imitation of Counsel I Have Known, a sure sign that he was enjoying himself enormously.

  Mr Bowels took breath. Some of his wiliness was giving place to resignation.

  ‘Yes, we got behind with our money, me and Wilde,’ he agreed. ‘First to the bank and then to him privately. You’ll never understand him, though, if you don’t understand Apron Street. It was changing, you see, and he wouldn’t have it.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘He tried to stop the clock.’

  ‘For a bloke who was merely trying to preserve ancient monuments he didn’t propose to do himself so badly,’ observed Luke, waving a long hand towards the impressive array of packages which had been taken from the coffin. They lay on the desk in rows, treasury notes, negotiable securities, bags of coin even.

  Jas turned his eyes away, no doubt out of some kind of modesty.

  ‘The idea took hold on him,’ he admitted calmly. ‘I was talking about the beginning when it started, four years ago. At that time of day he was only determined that things should go on as they always had done in ’is father’s and grandfather’s time before ’im. It was a sort of a mania with ’im. Later on, the idea of getting rich took ’im by the throat, so to speak. It takes a lot of money, stopping the clock.’ He paused and shook his magnificent head. ‘He didn’t ought to ’ave turned to murder. That was doing too much to it altogether. I couldn’t bring meself to believe it of him, not at first.’

  ‘Yet afterwards you did, you know,’ Campion put in gently, ‘because after you had made the mistake of asking your brother-in-law to get me to investigate you were terrified lest he should find out that you had done so.’

  Mr Bowels’s mild eyes turned to him sharply.

  ‘Ah, you noticed old Congreve in my kitchen that night, did you? I wondered. You’re very quick, Mr Campion, I’ll say that for you. Congreve came round nosing and asking funny questions, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether he was doing it for James or not. That’s the long and the short of it, as we say in the trade.’

  Mr Campion leant back. The last little tangles in his nearly level cord were pulling out.

  ‘Why did you cosh young Dunning?’ he inquired abruptly. ‘Or did your son do it?’

  ‘It was neither of us, sir. That you very well know.’ Jas made an O of his tiny mouth, which, with the two teeth in the middle of it, now made him look like an enormous parrot-fish. ‘It was Greener did that, Mr Campion, with the butt of ’is gun. Didn’t want no noise.’

  The likelihood of the explanation came as a relief to everyone in the room, and the old man continued uninterrupted.

  ‘Greener came to my door just after dark, as was arranged. I was to hide him until Wilde, who was windy, was ready. He was pretty well out of ’is mind with fear. You could smell it off ’im. But I daren’t let ’im into the house, because Magers had arrived unexpected and was setting there large as life and twice as nosey. So I sent Greener down to the shed, all unknowing that Rowley, who’s only young ’imself, had let it to the boy Dunning. I don’t know what happened exactly but I can guess. Greener was a killer and he was on the run.’

  He sucked a tooth thoughtfully.

  ‘We had some strange clients.’

  Yeo said something to Luke, who turned to Dice.

  ‘You said James had notes on him from Raymond and who else?’

  ‘Steiner, sir. That was the fence we had the inquiry about last year.’

  ‘Raymond?’ Yeo sounded more than gratified. ‘If we get something fastened on him at last all this will have been worth the trouble for that alone. How very ingenious, and conventional, of James to work through the big receivers. Thoroughgoing little business man, isn’t he?’ He straightened himself in his chair, and lit another cigarette. ‘Well, now, it’s very late, Chief. Do we want any more from Bowels at the moment?’ Luke eyed Campion, who seemed mildly unhappy.

  ‘There’s always Ed Geddy,’ the lean man said awkwardly, and for the first time Jas Bowels grew rigid in his chair.

  ‘Ed Geddy,’ echoed Yeo with contempt. ‘Well, he killed a poor little girl who couldn’t have blacked his eye for him even if he’d given her the chance. He got away in this conjuring cabinet, did he? That’s a crime in itself.’

  Campion hesitated. ‘He got away, but he didn’t quite arrive,’ he murmured at last. ‘It was Ed Geddy who gave Apron Street its bad name among the fraternity. Either the drug was too powerful, the coffin too tight, or the journey too long. Ed died in the box. In view of the line he took when he thought Luke was going to raise the subject, Pa Wilde evidently diagnosed the drug.’

  In the deep silence which followed, during which every glance in the room was upon him, old Jas Bowels took a long sighing breath. His wicked eyes, in which there was yet the saving grace of guts, met Yeo’s own. He was pallid and sweating, but he kept his head.

  At last he spoke softly and deferentially as ever.

  ‘It’ll be a question of proof, sir, won’t it, if it’s true?’

  He was unanswerable he knew it quite as well as they did.

  After a while they dismissed him to the cells uncharged with the more serious crime.

  ‘I wonder how much loot he filched out of the coffin before he screwed it down,’ the Superintendent remarked almost cheerfully as the departing footsteps diminished down the corridor. ‘It’s to his credit he didn’t take the lot, I suppose. Your boys are taking his place apart now, are they, Charlie? Did you tell me you’d found the shares Campion keeps nattering about? Oh? They were with him?’

  ‘All present and correct.’ Luke patted a long envelope on the desk before him and raised his head to meet a uniformed man who had just come in.

  ‘Message from the doctor, sir. I was to say that the drug was probably chloral hydrate.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘It’s the reporters. There’s not a lot of us left in the front office and they’re very persistent, sir.’

  Where’s Inspector Bowden?’

  ‘At the bank, sir. The main branch seems to have arrived complete. I’ve never seen gentlemen so upset.’

  ‘No. I suppose not. What did they come in – hansom cabs?’

  ‘Rolls-hire, sir.’

  ‘I thought Inspector Gage was due from Fowler Street?’

  ‘He’s at the undertaker’s. Young Bowels has just been brought in and charged. Mr Pollit has gone for Jelf with two men, and Sergeant Glover has gone to see if he can wake the coroner’s department.’

  Luke laughed.

  ‘Tell ’em we won’t keep ’em longer than we can help and that Superintendent Yeo will be making a statement shortly.’

  ‘What’s this?’ demanded Yeo in high good humour. ‘Trusting me, Charlie?’

  Luke grinned at him. ‘Relying on you, Guv,’ he said cheerfully.

  Yeo turned bodily in his chair.

  ‘Campion, I always thought you were a clever chap,’ he began, his eyes twinkling. ‘All I know is that the prisoner killed the old woman for money. That’s the most convincing theory I’ve ever heard you advance in all the years I’ve known you. It took you plenty of time, didn’t it? It was so orthodox you nearly missed it, I suppose.’

  Campion regarded him with affection.

  ‘You give me a cigarette and I’ll tell you the little I know.’

  He accepted the light Luke gave him and leant back.

  ‘There’s going to be gaps in this until you fill them, and the first one was how it was that James learnt that Brownie Mines are due to produce Ingredient A in vast quantities almost at once. That is one of those burn-before-reading top secrets which have a disconcerting habit of leaking out these days. Anyway, he did learn it and it interested him because old Miss Ruth, gambler and family nuisance, not only possessed eight thousand first preference nego
tiable shares in the company, but, well knowing they were worthless, had left them to him in her will.’

  Luke put his feet on the desk.

  ‘When you say it like that it sounds a great temptation,’ he observed seriously.

  ‘It was. Not only that. The opportunity to kill her presented itself every other day. She was always trotting into his office on some excuse – and – this is the point – believe it or not, whenever the Palinodes interviewed their bank manager, either at home or in his office, they expected to take a glass of sherry wine with him.’

  ‘Get away!’ Yeo was taken off his balance. ‘No bank’s done that for fifty years.’

  ‘Except this one. You know Emett’s drawings of trains? dough’s is an Emett-train sort of bank. That’s why I was completely fogged until this afternoon.’

  ‘Ah, that was the significance of the green sherry glass,’ put in Luke.

  Campion nodded. ‘The whole thing was given me on a plate – or rather, on a tray – the first time I met Miss Evadne. She and James were conferring when I went up to her room, and when I appeared she camouflaged the glasses and hid the empty bottle, presumably because it was empty. I had forgotten the incident until this evening, when dear little Miss Cardboard Hat spoke about the applegreen glasses. I went in to Lawrence and asked him if the family took refreshment at the bank when they called. He simply said yes. It did not occur to him that it was even unusual. His father expected it. The bank manager’s father expected it. So do their children. That’s the sort of people the Palinodes are. Every time the world goes thud they put their heads back in a book.’

  ‘Well I’m damned.’ Yeo seemed more shaken by this survival of past elegance than by the crime. ‘So he merely slipped a dose in the old girl’s glass one morning? I didn’t realize he inherited the shares.’

  ‘He didn’t. Miss Ruth had changed her will since she last told him about it and had made her most irritating bequest to her latest bête noire, Captain Seton, with whom she was quarrelling over a room. The news did not break at once and soon after the anonymous letters started, the police came down on the street like a herd of buffaloes, and the fat was in the fire.’